Silver Wolves

Jonah is a teenager torn between the life of the streets and a life of art and opportunity in 1950s New York City.

The first young adult novel by the award-winning writer of noir and American life who the Los Angeles Times called "Absolutely unique among American writers."

Jonah Salt is incarcerated in a juvenile detention center in the Bronx, after getting busted for burglary and gang activity. His probation officer gets him out and at the behest of his public school teacher, he auditions for and gains admittance to the High School of Music and Art (M&A) for his stunning drawings of wolves, designs he created for his gang, the Silver Wolves. The year is 1952.

While a student at M&A he meets Merle, who is the smartest girl he's ever met. She is a student journalist for the school newspaper and wheelchair-bound, a survivor of polio, which makes her something like an outcast. Their relationship grows, deepens, and becomes romantic. But Jonah Salt is straddling two worlds. What his posh M&A friends don't know is that his dad is institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital. His older brother, Michael, the former leader of the Silver Wolves, is serving twenty years at Castle Billy, a military prison on Governor's Island. And his mother is constantly at work, trying to make ends meet.

Michael's incarceration has left the Silver Wolves vulnerable, and when tensions with other gangs begin to spark, Jonah is tasked with maintaining the peace for everyone in the neighborhood. The duties of his gang life begin to catch up to his new life at M&A, and Jonah needs to make a choice. Will he remain loyal to his second family--his gang? Or will he retreat into the utopia of M&A, his art, and new love? In Silver Wolves, we see a young man make decisions to help those whom he loves the most, no matter the cost.

Author: Jerome Charyn
Publisher: Triangle Square
Published: 03/24/2026
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 8.57h x 5.61w x 1.04d
ISBN: 9781644215180
Audience: Young Adult


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/01/2026
Foreword 02/27/2026
School Library Journal 02/27/2026 pg. 1

About the Author
JEROME CHARYN is an award-winning American author. His first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, was published in 1964; and with his eighth novel Blue Eyes (1975), the debut of detective character Isaac Sidel, Charyn attracted wide attention and acclaim. With more than 50 published works, including novels, memoirs, graphic novels, short stories, plays, and creative nonfiction, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Two of his memoirs have been named a New York Times Book of the Year, and Charyn has received numerous awards, including a 1983 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Fiction and a Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Charyn has also been named Commander of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Minister of Culture. Silver Wolves is his first young adult novel.